Buying a condo/townhouse

So we are pre-approved and my wife and I are starting to look at places tommorrow. Being the Silicon Valley/Bay Area, there is really no chance for us to afford a house, so we are likely looking towards buying a condo/townhouse.

Anybody got any simple thoughts/tips for looking into condos or townhouses? It will be our first purchase, so we are pretty much clueless aside from reading Homebuying for Dummies.

have you thouht of moving out to the manteca/modesto area and commuting? you could by a fat house out here with the money you’ll spend on a condo or townhouse out there.

Jason are u thinking about it as an investment or a place to live? If you are thinking about an invesment buy around your area stay at where you are at because the return in the long run would be greater eventhough its a small condo or townhouse just because of your location… Now if you are just buying a house to live in I would go w/ what P-Dog suggested… commute and get a bigger place…

If it were me I would think of it as an investment though…

We looked for 6 months before we bought our first home.

If you don’t love it, don’t buy it.

Buy something in move in condition, don’t spend tens/hundreds of thousands on something you have to repair.

Buy something you can afford. You will quickly find out about the $100 and higher check to Lowes on a monthly basis.

Try the drive at 5. Rush hour sucks, you will drive it for many years, so make sure you can handle the commmute.

And again, if you don’t love it, don’t buy it. We were in this house with the realtor for about ten minutes when we decided it was home. Four years later, we couldn’t be happier.

fitone - both are considerations. We’d like to have a place where we can fit well, but will hold its resale value.

P-DOG - I don’t want to commute and I think we can find something decent for our price range.

Actually, we are really dealing with two decisions: 1)buy a condo in the Bay Area or 2)move to Iowa with friends and start over there.

Jason if thats the case stay in San Jose or the sillicon valley area the market value of your condo/townhouse is great over there… you’ll make a profit in the end…

Just a suggestion…